Fig 1. Lucelle Pillay, Theresa Anthoniamah Pillay. 2025. Digital Copy. (Date of photo unknown).
Note: The racial descriptor 'Indian' appears in single quotations throughout this article. This reserves its use as necessary within the local socio-political framework of South Africa, yet open to dialectical deconstruction within the argument of identity. A deconstructive approach is applied to this term, but not to supplant it with a truer designation (Hall 1996:1), which may merely apply a veneer of political correctness. This article positions the descriptor under erasure (Erwin cites Nayak 2012:97), as inapplicable to contemporary identity discourse, on the basis that it was generated within a paradigm of racial inferiority (Pillay 2019:80; Hall 1996:1).
My mother was named after Mother Teresa of Kolkata (1), but she often jested that any similarity stopped at the name. I remember her as loving, strong-willed and brave with a cutting sense of humour. Her parents, Sylvia Grace and Vincent Joshua Pillay had a beautiful period home in Bentley Street and were loyal members of the Roman Catholic parish of St Anthony's Church (2) in Durban. Founded by missionaries (3), this church holds great historic relevance for 'Indian' Catholics as a place of spiritual refuge during British colonialism and Afrikaner nationalism. It was not merely for worship but provided education, counselling and a sense of community to a minority group struggling under the gaze of 'difference' (Landy et al 2004:208).
Religion provided a sense of identity and belonging that the state withheld, it featured in all aspects of cultural life, from baptisms to the last rites. My mother looks proud in her white lace dress (fig 1) on the the day of her First Holy Communion. I asked her about her life in the 50s, assuming that it must have been challenging for a young woman of colour. She, however, always spoke fondly of her childhood and youth, but mentioned that the Catholic nuns at St Anthony's School (4) were harsh and often cruel disciplinarians. She smirked as she told me the story of when she refused to remove her school blazer during Botany class. She said the nun turned red in the face as she yelled, "You 'Indian' lassies love your bloody blazers in this humidity!". She would do an impersonation using her best Anglo-Irish accent and we would both laugh.
My grandparents lived within the city limits of Durban in a racially mixed area referred to as a 'grey zone'. It housed liberal White, Coloured and 'Indian' families, however, during the implementation of the Group Areas Act of 1950 (5) people were ordered to sell their properties and relocate to specifically allocated areas over a given grace period. Within this time, my mother had married my father in 1962, they settled in a flat in Wills Road and started their small family. My brother, Emmanuel Joshua and my sister, Pauline Antoinette were born in Wills Road, close to their maternal grandparents home. They still have fond childhood memories of walks to church under the dappled shade of the Jacaranda trees and Sunday lunches at Ma and Pa's house. After many final warnings, my mother and her parents had to negotiate leaving both their homes, friends, church community and everything they'd known behind. I found the notification to terminate occupation (fig 2) amongst my parents things, I can assume that it symbolised a rupture in their being that was far more significant than they could say in words.
Fig 2. Lucelle Pillay. Municipal notice to terminate occupation in group area. 1963. Digital scan.
My parents were eventually forced to relocated to a free-standing house in the 'Indian' township of Chatsworth. My maternal grandfather, Vincent, secured a house in an area called Arena Park by paying a hefty deposit. He visited the plot during the development phase to ensure it had a 'good' aspect and was located in a relatively safe area. He tried to placate my inconsolable mother by saying it was "the Indian Berea" (6), but she later described it as a jarring wasteland, sprinkled with tiny houses and no trees.
She eventually settled into her life and made friends with neighbours who were Hindu, Muslim and Christian (7). I was born in 1972, into a very 'brown' world of legal segregation (8), I would only experience 'other' races in passing. The Black women who would sell grass brooms and the men who would push the milk trolleys, would cry out or blow a whistle to attract people out their houses. My mother told me to call them "Mama and Baba", I watched as she gave them ice water in the shade of our red polished verandah. She would effortlessly move between English and Zulu (9), the foreign sounds and clicks were strange to my young ears. Black people seemed friendly and animated, but White people appeared distant and unfriendly. My first interactions was during grocery shopping trips, I would cling to my mother and stare at the White children without shoes. My parents would busily select items but never interact or speak to White people. Sometimes they would stare at us but mostly they were indifferent and went about their business pretending we were not there.
My favourite shopping trips were those to the 'Indian' and European markets in Durban city. These were vibrant places, filled with unusual smells and delicious treats. My mother was in her element, as the city was her old home, she chatted cheerfully with the white butchers in the European section. I noticed that these White people were friendly and kind, a large, smiling man with a red moustache and striped apron handed me a pink slice of ham. I glanced at my mother and she nodded her approval, I said a soft "thank you" and felt my cheeks flush. I happily took tiny bites from my meaty treat as we walked through the bustling stalls, smells of spice and incense filled the air, whilst vendors yelled out specials on fresh fish and large crab.
Next on the itinerary was the fruit and vegetable sellers (fig 3) that sat on the floor between the 'Indian' and European markets. My mother told me to call them "Patii" (10), as a sign of respect, since most were older ladies. I loved looking at the myriad of colours and the tentatively stacked shapes. The ladies were different from my mother, they wore bright sari's and spoke in quick, short bursts, a language I had never heard before. They efficiently served their customers, by weighing, bartering and providing change. I noticed they wore yellow necklaces with gold charms (11), attached to this was a small pouch of money. They would constantly pull out this pouch from their undergarment to insert their profits. The ladies would talk loudly to each other across the shopper's lanes, while some would eat while they worked. Often they would be babysitting a toddler or a young child, I would look on curiously, but the children looked bored and hungry, with a glazed far away stare.
Whilst my mother bought her monthly quota of produce, I observed this chaotic mix of humans. In this space, Whites (Sir and Mam), Blacks (Mama and Baba) and 'Indians' (Uncle and Aunty) all came together, it was allowed here. I noticed that a White woman affectionately called an 'Indian' seller, "Mary" (12), I tugged on my mother's arm as it was a name I recognised from Church. As we made our way through the crowd that got progressively thicker towards midday, I heard the name 'Mary' being called out by several other White women. Surely all these sellers didn't have the same name? They didn't look or sound Christian, but my mother ignored my questions while she waited for the various 'Marys' to serve their White customers first.
It was only as I grew older and learnt the social hierarchies of race, that I revisited what actually occurred that day. I understood that 'Mary' was a derogatory term applied with impunity to all 'Indian' women by White people. As an academic, I considered that it may have possible origins with Indian converts being baptised by missionaries, who commonly allotted the biblical names of, 'Anthony' or 'Mary' (Brain 1983:178; Thomas 2002:194). I thought about the dehumanising mundanities that are normalised in our society, but what's in a name? 'Mary', is it the equivalent to 'Indian' or 'Indian women'? Is it the broad strokes, one size fits all solution that's just so darn convenient. Is 'Mary' the new 'Mandatory'? The race box they insist I tick? My passivity makes me complicit, a self-catagorising, one dimensional 'Mary' of sorts.
Fig 3. 1860 Heritage Centre. The 'Indian' fruit & vegetable sellers of Durban Market. (Date of photo unknown).
Digital copy.
After the fall of apartheid, I moved out of the township as most young people did. After my dad passed in 1999, I visited my mother on weekends to take her shopping and to have a meal together. She never moved out of the house in Chatsworth that her father bought her, nor did she get to travel much. The TV was always on and she chatted happily about programmes she enjoyed and how she was never bored or lonely. I knew she only said this so that I wouldn't feel guilty about leaving her.
She was always appeared grateful for the life she was afforded and remained positive even as an older woman. Once she told me that the world had changed around her and that she worried about my life ahead. "Things were simple back then" she said as she stared at the TV screen, "but it isn't anymore. You are different though, like me, you will make it". My mother passed after a short illness in 2010 at the age of 69, she wasn't a perfect person, but she was the perfect mother. When I think of her and the story of the 'Indian' Marys, I feel that familiar pang of desolation that only a dark woman can feel or know. She wasn't ignoring me that day, she just wanted to preserve my innocence for bit longer, as I would for my own daughter. How could she explain these things anyway? The man-made order of things, I would find out soon enough, and I did. On that hot humid day at the Durban market, my mother gave me the gift of a perfect world and I will forever be grateful to her.
Footnotes
(1) Mother Teresa, born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, North Macedonia, was a Roman Catholic nun and missionary known for her charitable work with the poor in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India.
(2) Named after St Anthony of Padua, the church was consecrated in 1886. St. Anthony’s Catholic Church catered to a predominantly ‘Indian’ parish. It started as a wood and iron structure and was later upgraded in 1901 by parishioner funding.
(3) Father JB Sobon (founder), Father Gourlay, Father Boudry and Father Rauol Maingot presided at St Anthony’s church from the late 19th to early 20th century.
(4) The earliest record of St Anthony’s School appears in 1935, it later moved from Victoria Street to its current site at the corner of Centenary Road and Carlisle Street in Durban. The school operated as a primary school until 1960 when there was a secondary phase included.
(5) A legal framework implemented by the Afrikaner National Party in 1950 to establish particular districts as 'group areas', thereby separating people on the basis of race. The act imposed control over interracial property transactions and property occupation throughout South Africa. It resulted ultimately in the forced removals of ‘Indians’ and is argued to be the most damaging tool to racial cohesion and identity formation across all races (Pillay 2019:82-83).
(6) Berea was an exclusive White residential area in Durban city, known for its historic architectural vernacular, hills and dales.
(7) Christians included various denominations such as Roman Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican and Pentecostal.
(8) The apartheid was a system of racial segregation implemented by the Afrikaner National Party.
(9) Fankagalo is a bridging language of communication in multilingual and multinational settings on South African mines. It is a form of reduced Zulu spoken by Whites, Indians and Coloureds as a tool to communicate with Black language speakers. Writers spell this pidgin as Fanagalo but Fanakalo is the correct spelling in Zulu or Xhosa orthography (SAHO 2024)
(10) "Patti" (Pronounced Paartti) is a Tamil word that means Granny.
(11) Married Indian women wear a necklace called a 'Tali' (Pronounced Thaali), it consist of a bright yellow string and gold symbols.
(12) The term "Mary" has been used in South Africa as a colloquial or sometimes derogatory reference to women of color, particularly those of Indian descent. One possible origin of this term is linked to the employment of Indian women in domestic roles during the colonial and apartheid eras. Employers, often white women, would refer to their Indian female servants collectively as "Mary," regardless of their actual names. This practice not only stripped these women of their individual identities but also reinforced a social hierarchy that marginalized people of color. It's important to note that such terms are now widely recognized as offensive and are remnants of a discriminatory past.
List of References
Brain, J. 1983. Christian Indians in Natal 1860-1911, An historical and statistical study. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Desai, A & Vahed, G. 2013. Chatsworth: the making of a South African township. Durban: University of Kwa-Zulu Natal Press.
Erwin, K. 2012. Race and race thinking: reflections in theory and practice for researchers in South Africa and beyond. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 79:93-113. chrome-extension://transformationjournal.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/T79_Part10.pdf (Accessed 17 January 2025).
Hall, S. & Du Gay, P, eds. 1996. Questions of cultural identity. London: Sage. https://www.academia.edu/4362995/Hall_S_Questions_Of_Cultural_Identity (Accessed 16 October 2024).
Landy, F, Maharaj, B & Mainet-Valleix, H. 2004. Are people of Indian origin (PIO) “Indian”? A case study of South Africa. Geoforum 35:203-215. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248433750_Are_people_of_Indian_origin_PIO_Indian_A_case_study_of_South_Africa (Accessed 5 February 2025).
Pillay, K. 2019. Indian identity in South Africa, in The Palgrave handbook of ethnicity, edited by S. Ratuva. London: Palgrave Macmillan:77-92.
Pillay, Y. 2010. History of Saint Anthony Indian School in Durban. Ulwazi Programme. https://www.ulwaziprogramme.org/history-of-saint-anthony-indian-school-in-durban/ (Accessed 9 February 2025)
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